Wednesday, April 8, 2009

I found this video and although it's a bit dated (2005) the examples really hit home with me because it discusses how the web has changed collaboration and how businesses can't compete with the speed and scale of collaboration. A point that stuck out to me as well was how corporations (in addition to having to centrally organize the work) needs to hire managers just to make people do what they want! Collaborators are already self-selected to do the things they are interested in - so they don't need "bossing" and the work is better. The challenge here is to pull the various work together - and that's what the wed does best!

In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning.